The bdo element
I’m pacing my office when the door swings open with impertinence.
“You’re smoking now?”
I aim the glowing tip at my nose to inspect it. “So that’s what this is?”
A suited arm thrusts a takeout cup towards me.
“Coffee? Or cat piss like I ordered?”
“Hey, save your weird cat piss remarks for the HTML <bdo> element article.”
I wield the cigarette like a sparkler, drawing frantic figures in the air between us. “The <bdo> element article! The <bdo> element article! That’s all anyone seems to talk about anymore!”
Behind the cascading ash, he pinches the bridge of his nose. “Come on, man, you must have something.”
“Sure, sure, I’ve got something for you.” I turn to strafe the touchpad, rousing my long-suffering laptop. “The <bdo> HTML element overrides the current directionality of text, so that the text within is rendered in a different direction.”
He makes the 😑 face. “That’s great, Heydon, just great. Now why don’t you read me the first paragraph of the MDN article?”
I send the laptop somersaulting into the wall. “Why don’t you go fu—”
A hand grasps my shoulder. He’s close, looming like some kind of vampiric buzzard. “You’ve lost it, man. You’ve gone off the deep end.”
The grip eases and he steps back. Raising both hands to make a wall between us, he states his solemn resolution: “I’m sorry, really I am. But I’m gonna have to put Al on it.”
“Al? Fucking Al? But all he does is rip off other people’s blogs!”
He points a finger at my neck like a shiv. “Apparently, that’s all you do too. But Al doesn’t send me out FOR FUCKING CAT PISS.”
Laughter starts bubbling up from somewhere deep and dark inside me. Soon it’s erupting from my mouth, coating the walls in bitter black soot.
When the hysteria finally subsides, I’m on my knees, the takeout cup clasped between them. A single tear falls and is lost forever in the luminous yellow.
“But the cat piss is the point,” I sob. “The cat piss is the difference.”
The HTML4 specification did not specify events for this element; they were added in XHTML. This is most likely an oversight.
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